The screen saver doesn’t do much…

I have shared this article with the blog called ekcupchai.com

3 January, 07- The official day to start New Year’s work as the 2^nd usually occupies stories about how everyone celebrated their New Year. I sit on my comp as usual staring at the interesting screen saver which is black and white in color. It has got a teenage girl drinking water from a water-pump and a bird flying towards the sky. The words written are very suggestive- “Like birds, let us leave behind what we needn’t carry- sorrows, fear, grudges, pain. Fly light. Life is so beautiful”. Being an optimist from the day I started making sense of the World around me, these words brighten my day and so does my screen saver. Perhaps because that’s what my experience so far taught me, even when I have wavered many times from the situation…it has made me believe in it again.

As Usual I opened my browser and clicked on my bookmarked ‘ibnlive’ website, to know the proceedings in the brutal Nathari case. But before I could go into the details of the gruesome case of the butcher house, the headlines struck me: “Girl Molested”- 70 men molested and almost stripped a woman in public while everyone else was enjoying the scene. A friend who accompanied the lady to the Gate Way of India in Mumbai to see the New Year eve fire crackers tried in vain to protect the lady. A photographer who was taking pictures of the firecrackers took the candid pictures of the gruesome incident and gave a complaint to the police. Next day a mid-day paper published the shocking pictures- It accompanied a picture with a crowd around a lady who was being covered by a man. The photograph was made hazy a bit. And the story that followed shocked me to death draining every bit of optimism that I had had that morning. After a few minutes of shock I looked at the number of comments posted on the story – ‘41’. Eager to read how the crowd had protested against the disgusting act, I opened the column. I thought there would be anger flowing in from the public for having such beasts in our country but I was wrong. What followed were several lines of advices about how a woman should be dressed in public, how Indian values have got lost and how we Indians have aped the west. The comments were even more shocking than the story.

Let me ask- What license does it give the crowd to disgrace a lady like that? For those who think the lady’s dress is the reason for it, I have a question-When a man's flesh doesn't invite such atrocities then why should a woman be questioned for such things? Even when you are fully clothed are you not vulnerable to such disgrace? Be it men or women, dignity doesn't translate into the amount of clothes one wears...dignity is in one's mind. Even a few disgracing words generate so much trauma...leave alone such eccentric acts. Harassment, especially to women, is the only crime in which the victim is further victimized. In my opinion people have constructed a false idea of Indian values. Indian values always translated into respecting women, may be it was manifested in the form of dress code. But many of us still do not realize that manifestations change according to time but the essence should never. In action against atrocity is the biggest drawback in a person!!!

And I voice this opinion of mine not because I am a woman, but because I am a human being who has gone through such situation (may be not of such an unimaginable intensity). My sense of mental stability still remains questioned after those hours of reading the comments on the story. My screen saver is unable to pacify or bring back the hope it used to give me. Not that I am not a fighter but that I am confused with whom to fight- people or their thought? If it is the latter then I need greater strength than what optimism gives me. How and from where, I don’t know!

It will be long since my screen saver again starts making sense to me…